Month: September 2003

What kind of idiot misses the rock concert of his first and last Rendezvous?

What kind of fsckwit, having actually obtained band passes, goes off to Patiala instead of headbanging at Blitzkrieg?

That would be me.

Sigh. Ishaan and Rishi, when they persuaded me to become sharif, did their job too well. I have become so sharif it’s not funny. I have gone past sharifapa and become an automaton capable of only giving Mock CATS, and who has completely abandoned adventure and excitement and really wild things.

On the other hand, I can still exaggerate.

I am quite disgusted with myself, though. I didn’t have to worry about classes or anything, as with at this years GIR. (In a cruel twist of fate, I missed the GIR and returned to Patiala to attend a class which was subsequently canceled.) It was the first, and probably only rock concert I could have attended this year. As a general philosophy in life, I try to live in the moment and do things for no good reason other than to see what will happen next. And then, like a complete arse, I let myself become so disheartened by losing in that day’s quiz prelims, that despite getting band passes- band passes!- I go and toodle off to Patiala.

This, when I am fully aware that very few things beat rock cocerts in the ‘things that happened next’. As Arnab pointed out, I could have been deflowered by bandaides. Heck, when it comes to being deflowered I’m not picky. If I continue to be sharif, though, I’ll probably end up a thirty-one year old virgin. Knowing my luck, I won’t even get Perizaad Zorabian at the end of it.

It’s my final year in college, but this is the first year I’ve ever been to Rendezvous, the annual cultural festival at IIT Delhi, and the mecca of every engineering student in North India.

Rendezvous has been going on since Tuesday, but today was the first day there was anything for me- today was the first day there were quizzes. So I toodled over, and late as ever, missed the first quiz, which was bad- I could have won that one.

In between the first quiz and the second quiz, I hung around the Dogra Hall lobby, where the rangoli contest was being held.

The point of a rangoli contest is for people to spread different coloured sands or powders on the floor in geometrical and artistic designs. This allows engineering students (who are overwhelmingly male) to look at the butt cleavage of girls from LSR and JMC. As a bonus, some works of art also get created.

The second quiz, which was a pure audio-visual one, I paired up with a random partner- a first year chemenger from Roorkee and got my butt kicked in the prelims. I stayed on to watch the finals, which by a happy coincidence were conducted by Nidhi (who now has a tattoo). And two other dudes.

All right. There was more than one happy coincidence. Here’s the story.

During the quiz, there was a connection audio question asked about our favourite search engine. Nobody in the teams got it, so it passed to the audience. I answered correctly.

At the end of the quiz, I’m talking to Nidhi. She turns to one of the other quizmasters and says “Aadisht recognised the Google office picture.”.

Other guy: “Aadisht Khanna?! aNax?!”

Me: “Juventas?!”

The other guy was Juventas, longtime contributor to the now defunct TimePassTown. I’ve never met him until now, but for the past one and a half years, he’s been Nidhi’s calassmate.

There’s this issue of Spider-Girl in which the villain, Crazy Eight, says “I’m not a big fan of coincidence.”. I, on the other hand, am.

Because, you see, there are five people handling the Blitzkrieg (rock band contest) prelims, and two of them are Nidhi and Juventas. And my chances of sneaking in are now so much higher. Yay!

It’s eight p.m. right now. The prelims start approximately at two minutes to midnight. Hopefully, I’ll be watching them.

If you’ve been reading the older Fillets, you’ll know that my house was supposed to be reconstructed.

What you don’t know is that the reconstruction never really got off the ground. We bought a bunch of marble, looked at bathroom fittings, and then postponed it indefinitely.

So here’s the problem. The marble is sitting around unused at the back of the house. I suspect it’s destroying the vastu and the feng shui. Even if it isn’t, it’s destroying what little aesthetic appeal the house had to being with.

However, I am convinced that the vastu has been severely depleted, and this is the reason that half the electronic appliances in my house blew up during the summer vacations. The TV blew up. The microwave, which has always been temperamental, also blew up. My PalmV, which wasn’t even plugged into the mains, also went on the fritz. Recently the telephone in my room rang it’s last.

It hasn’t just affected electronic items. My grandmother recently suffered a lung infection. Three weeks after that, my mother’s back gave out. My father’s feet are worse than ever. To live in my house, it seems, is to be entrapped in a morass of misery.

Yet, one person in my hosue is not merely unaffected, but seems to be going from strength to strength. My brother, Bhavya.

He’s been placing in the top three in every inter-school quiz he’s been to since school started in April. Uptil now, he’s won vast amounts of cash, a fourteen-inch flat TV, and other items of interest too numerous to mention. At this rate, I’ll be counting on him to support me through my post-graduate years, if I have any.

To top it off, last year he went for a Science Olympiad sponsored by HONDA ASIMO, and won an all expenses paid educational trip to Bangkok.

Yes, Bangkok is very education, especially for someone with a fourteen incher. Ahem. I’ll stop with the dirty puns now, but in my defence, it was my Bhavya who first said that.

And the reason Bhavya is so unaffected by the bad vastu is simple. The Preity Zinta poster I bought last semester is now in his room. She beams down at him benevolently while he sleeps, and wards off all the evil that poor vastu inflicts on the rest of the house. And not only does she ward off evil, but she brings him good luck too. Which makes me wonder why exactly my room decoration currently consists of Daredevil posters, but we’ll deal with that later.

In addition to the Preity Zinta poster, that room also contains numerous Laughing Buddha figurines. And just outside it, are a few Ganesh statuettes and miniatures.

There’s something common to all of these, and this it. Preity Zinta, the Laughing Buddha and Ganesh all have dimples.

I don’t know exactly what it is about dimples that makes them wellsprings of joy and good fortune. Possibly they form little reservoirs for luck particles. The bad luck is heavy and sinks to the bottom, and the good luck rises to the top, evaporates, and diffuses. it’s a theory. Don’t knock it. If you’re going to believe in vastu, you might as well believe in dimples.

So, if you’ll exucse me, I’ll get my resume printed out, have lunch, buy a broom and a lock, and another Preity Zinta poster.

I now feel better than I have ever since final year started. Rested, and content. Yes, I feel good.

The first reason for this is that the midsems and evaluations and stuff ended, and I did all the things I said I would to to unwind. I watched Daredevil, I watched Risky Business, I watched Friends and I watched Trehan smoke up. I read Dubliners and reread Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and right now I’m reading Vanity Fair. Oh, and I ate pizza when I got home. Cheese good. Yay!

My hard disk, which by all indications had crashed now seems to be merely in a bad mood. A backup is called for ASAP, but at least it’s not a total loss. Not yet.

Why else do I feel good? The grades finally came through and my CGPA has risen from 6.00 to 6.47. 6.75 isn’t far now.

My CAD instructor is off on holiday for two weeks, so I’ll be able to attend Rendezvous after all. Oh, and since I’m going to bunk three and a half days for that, I’ll probably get my permanent drivers license issued (finally).

Oh, and yesterday I successfully conducted a little open quiz in college, and went to a pretty good party.

It’s cumulative happiness. It’s not as mindblowing as the Uttarayanic phase I entered in November last year, but nice and slow and comfortable.

The fly in the ointment is that I don’t blog as much as I used to any more. I’m posting this nine days after the last Fillet, and it’s a status report, not a little monograph upon a subject. And while there is a touch of vanity involved, there’s another worrying factor about not writing as much as I used to. It’s excellent that I’m packing my time, but if I’m doing so much that’s so interesting and not finding enough time to write about it, that could mean my time management isn’t optimal. On the other hand, it could mean that I’m taking life seriously for once, so we’ll just see in hindsight.

Midsems ended today. Most of them went pretty well. Today has brought to a close two weeks of tension.

My seminar’s done, the midsems are done, and there’s nothing to preoccupy myself with for almost another month. Except the usual studying but that’s enjoyable so no worries.

So here’s how I’m going to relax.

I’m going to rent movies from Attractions (the VCD library) and watch them at night lying in my bed with the lights turned off and a packet of Nutyumz and Kurkure by my side.

I’m going to go to Biblio (where I’ve finally paid all the membership dues and given my two passport-size photographs) and borrow a few classics for the nights when I’m not watching movies.

I’m going to call people, since the Airtel is now offering STD at Rs 1.20 a minute if you pay 75 paise a day, and throws in calls to Europe and the US at Rs. 10 a minute in the bargain.

On Friday, I’m going to go home. And then, on Saturday I’m going to have pizza. It’s been three months since I had pizza, and I’ve had mozzarella cravings for the past three weeks.

I can’t understand the logic behind Pizza Hut stuffing their crusts with chicken. Why would anybody want to stuff the crust with chicken when they can stuff it with cheese? Then again, I can’t understand a lot of stuff, so to each his own.

On Saturday, I shall also be meeting Vikram, who is squeezing all the wild things he normally does in a year into his two month vacation. Vikram is aghast that Ishaan and Rishi have forced me to become a short-haired, clean-shaven, and above all sharif human being, and is intent on undoing the damage. So Saturday promises to be fun.

Sunday’s the Mock CAT, and back to the grind. But what the heck, the grind’s what I’ve been doing since July. I think I’ve got the hang of it now.